Each Unhappy Family
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: The Blacks are unhappy in their own way. Very much their own. OBWB, otherwise gen. COMPLETE.


**Title:** Each Unhappy Family

 **Disclaimer:** J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

 **Pairings:** Orion/Walburga and vague intimations of marriages for Bellatrix and Narcissa, otherwise gen

 **Rating:** PG-13

 **Warnings:** Angst, violence, implied madness, torture and animal harm, present tense

 **Wordcount:** 3800

 **Summary:** The Blacks are unhappy in their own way. Very much their own way.

 **Author's Notes:** Another July Celebration fic, which actually began as an anonymous Advent prompt for a gen story about the Blacks as a family. Hope this satisfies.

 **Each Unhappy Family**

Walburga has always seen shadows out of the corner of her eye.

No one else ever seemed to see them. There are cousins and aunts and uncles who went mad and cackled about Muggles hiding in their wardrobes or Gryffindors reaching ghostly hands out of their trunks, but the mere shadows cast by light never seem to unnerve them.

Walburga knows her fears stole much from her. She was the most beautiful girl in Slytherin, once, with a high face and dark eyes that she sees now only in her niece Bellatrix. She knows that she could have snared another husband than her second cousin. There were boys who spent hours, days, years just watching the turn of her _wrist_ , never mind anything else. If she had spoken a little louder, a little longer, or gone to a few more Quidditch games.

But there were long shadows in the Slytherin common room, striking out from corners that Walburga could have sworn were empty just a moment ago. No matter how fast she turned around, she never managed to surprise them. They scattered and were gone.

She had to stay within bounds not to upset them. She needed to remain close to the family she had grown up with.

It's not as if Orion was _too_ close. She didn't do what the Malfoys did, or were at least rumored to do, two centuries ago, and match brother to sister, because no one else was good enough for a Malfoy. They were both Blacks. They came from different parents, though. It's almost a coincidence that they already shared a last name.

But after they wed, for a time, Walburga forsook the shadows. She whirled around the dance floor in Orion's arms and looked into his eyes and saw the calm contentment there. She knew as well as he did that he'd made a good choice.

When they were in their own house, the walls of Grimmauld Place that still loom around her now as she walks down the corridors, the shadows couldn't touch her.

But now the shadows have come back. And Walburga doesn't know what to do about them. That's why she's on the way to confront them.

She halts in the door of the nursery and stares and stares. The shadows lie around the cot in the center of the room. There are brilliant lights everywhere, flaring lamps and a fire tended by its own house-elf. Walburga ordered them placed there, just as she ordered all the room wrapped in soft darkness yesterday to see what would happen.

But it doesn't matter. The shadows don't alter for chance or circumstance of the light, now. They don't bother to hide. They proclaim themselves and array themselves proudly around her newborn son.

"Who are you, Sirius," Walburga whispers, "that the shadows take you for their own?"

She's to remember that, later. How the shadows came back and filled her son's eyes. It was like a prophecy of what he would become.

* * *

Sirius has always known his mother hates him. That's just the way she is.

To his father, he supposes, it's more that he's a disappointment. No natural talent for Dark Arts. His pranks not being dangerous enough. His tendency to turn his temper on members of his family instead of saving it for those outside. His liking for games that are just games, not training in power and control.

His Sorting into Gryffindor, later, will only confirm things Orion has long suspected, not be a surprise for him.

But it will be a surprise for his mother, who, even though she hates him, spends more time with Sirius than with Regulus, trying to coax and mold him into her vision of what a Black should be. That she spends more time staring at his shadow than at him is just the way she is, Sirius thinks. A Black through and through. Mad to the bone.

But he does remember one evening when he's seven and his mother is trying to teach him, once again, to torture Kreacher.

Kreacher always stands still for it; that's not the problem. As creepy as Sirius finds it when Kreacher holds his ears in shivering hands and closes his eyes with a look of ecstasy on his face, he can't blame his difficulties on Kreacher dodging.

Sirius just has no talent at the Dark Arts. He can try torture curses until his wand bleeds and it won't change anything.

But at just seven, he can't say that to his mum and be believed, and he doesn't have the words anyway. He just watches the way she wearily sits down across from him when Kreacher is sniveling at her feet for having "displeased Mistress," and looks at him.

"I saw shadows around you when you were born," she says abruptly.

Sirius blinks uncertainly. He's learned some basic Astronomy, some symbolisms of Light and Dark, and he thinks she's talking about that. But his head is full of suns and moons and constellations. He doesn't remember anything about shadows. "Um?" he asks finally, when Mum looks off to the side and as if she wouldn't continue.

"I thought it was a bad sign. I thought shadows were going to surround you and madden you and take you to their hearts." Mum is rambling to herself the way she does, when she sits at the table and is really talking to none of them, not even Father. "But now, I wonder…I wonder if they were shadows cast by Light."

Sirius blinks some more.

Mum turns to him and says, "I wonder if you're really a Light wizard."

Sirius's first feeling is panic. He's dreamed a lot of being a Light wizard, because the children he knows from those families have more fun, and it would be a way to defy his parents (which he's always looking for). But to know that he wouldn't fit in with his family _ever_ , that he can't do the spells his mother punishes him for not being able to do…

"No!" he blurts, and Mum blinks at him, expression hardening the way it always does when he contradicts her.

"'No,' Sirius?" she asks. "What sort of thing is that to say to your mother?"

That's the worst one, the very worst one she can begin with, and Sirius turns around and barks, "Here, I'll show you!" and launches the pain curse she's been trying to teach him at Kreacher.

Kreacher isn't expecting it, which is probably the only reason it works. He screams and writhes around on the floor for five seconds before the pain stops. Even when Sirius is as angry and frightened as he gets, he's just not good at Dark Arts.

But when Sirius turns around again, panting, hoping that at least Mum won't be angry, her face is transformed. She stands up and comes over and puts her hands on his shoulders, staring at him with such wide, bright eyes that Sirius leans against her. That's more often the way she looks at Regulus than him.

"My little boy," she murmurs, and kisses the top of his head. "I should have known you would learn. It just takes some time."

And, for an evening, all is good. Sirius regrets it later. He didn't really want to torture anyone, and he shouldn't have tortured Kreacher to please his mother. James tells him so, years later, when Sirius confesses the story, and James is the leading light of all good and wonderful that Sirius knows in his life.

But that one good evening lingers in his mind, a precious, poisonous memory, wrapped up and not even looked at it too often in cases it starts to dim. For one evening, he was his mum's little boy.

* * *

Regulus isn't very creative. Sirius is the one who comes up with pranks and twists on spells and even a potion that blew that attic up _spectacularly_. Regulus is the good second son who can do Dark Arts spells right the first time but never comes up with anything on his own.

Except the game.

Regulus comes up with that when he's five and Bella is fifteen, and he wants desperately to impress her.

Bella is the most wonderful person Regulus knows. She's so tall and stylish, and she has long black hair that's even more beautiful than his mum's. She looks into people's eyes and knows how good they are at Dark Arts in an instant, and she's _powerful_. Regulus can feel the magic leaking around her when she walks into a room.

And she's kind to a little cousin, a little boy, when she's a grown girl. She bends down in front of Regulus and compliments him on the way he handles his practice wand—at five, he's still two years away from being allowed to practice with a real wand—and makes him show her how he can wield it with a snap of his wrist. And she shows him spells she knows at Hogwarts, and talks about the glories of Slytherin House endlessly, but she somehow always knows what's most interesting and tells him that. Regulus can hardly wait to go to school.

One day, though, it's obvious Bella's bored. She looks out the window at the rain and sighs a lot. Regulus doesn't know why, except that because it's raining they can't go outside and maybe Bella really wants to be outside today.

(Later he can work with dates and figure out that Bella probably got turned down for her first choice of marriageable Slytherin boy. But that never occurred to him then).

So Regulus feels a spark in his head, and he comes up with the game. He runs and gets the miniature Quidditch brooms and players that Sirius got him for his birthday last year, and arranges them on the floor. Then he says, "Bella?"

She turns around and looks at him. She only blinks her large, liquid eyes once when she sees the figures on the floor, which Regulus knows is _also_ kinder than he deserves. "What is it?"

"I know that you don't like chess. But I thought you could cast spells that would make the players move like chess pieces." Regulus sits down on the other side of them and looks at her hopefully. "I mean, not like in Quidditch. I could call out things, and you could have the players do them?"

By the end, even though Bella hasn't laughed at him, Regulus knows his voice is uncertain. It sounded brilliant when he thought of it, but maybe it isn't great. He knows Bella likes real Quidditch only for the fouls and the chance to maybe see someone fall off a broom or start a fight.

But Bella smiles and snatches up her wand. She can always use it here or in any of the other Black properties, because their parents' magic covers theirs up. And besides, such petty restrictions as not using magic outside school are not for _Blacks,_ as Regulus's parents have carefully taught him. They're for Mudbloods and the like.

"Good, good!" said Bella. "It will give me lots of practice with small charms!" She murmurs, " _Wingardium Leviosa_ ," and the figures of the Quidditch players rise into the air. "Tell me what to do, now!"

"Make them fly in a giant spiral," says Regulus authoritatively. For the first time in his life, he feels like Father. "And then have half of them attack each other!"

It takes Bella a while to figure out how to do that, but in the end, half of them try to play a game of Quidditch, while the other half attack them and slaughter the Quidditch players in the air. Regulus finds it hard to give orders in the end, because he's laughing so hard.

The best thing is, so is Bella.

* * *

Sometimes it strikes Bellatrix as ironic that the only peace she finds is in her young cousin Regulus's company.

Father never was company. Dromeda and Cissy are too young to understand, _really_ understand, and Dromeda has those unfortunate ideas. Sirius is…

Bellatrix shakes her head and leans back against the tree in the old Grimmauld Place garden, watching Regulus as he practices his Dark Arts spells against a cat that Bellatrix Transfigured from a rusted piece of metal. Once, she thought she might marry her cousin Sirius. But her mother said it wouldn't be proper, that there had been too many cousin marriages in the Black family already, and Bellatrix is glad now that she's been saved from that fate. Sirius has even worse inclinations than Dromeda.

But Regulus. Though he's proper, he's even younger than her sisters. He isn't even at Hogwarts yet!

But Bellatrix finds peace watching him anyway, even if he doesn't call her by her proper name and says "Bella." It's not malicious, the way it would be with Sirius. He only knows her by that name and has a childish insistence that he should go on knowing her by it.

Regulus is going to be a much better Black heir than Sirius.

Maybe that's why Bellatrix consents to be Bella again for one afternoon, and stands up and goes over to him to correct his grip on the wand. Regulus looks up at her with his eyes full of awe. Bellatrix smiles. It's nice to be adored, to be worshipped. She thinks she shall insist on Mother finding her a husband who looks at her like that.

"Not like that," she tells Regulus, and carefully readjusts his hand on the wand until he holds it with a different sort of grip. "You have to make sure you don't twist the wand too much, or the curse won't last. Watch me."

She draws her own wand. It's wonderful to use it outside Hogwarts, even though no Black child has ever got in trouble for practicing accidental magic. Her ancestors are above such silly rules or traditions, whatever Dumbledore intends to name it today.

But magic is always thrilling to Bellatrix. The way it courses through her, spins through her wand, and leaps out to enact her will on the world. Maybe she can't affect some things at all, like what Dromeda and Sirius think or the continued existence of Muggles, but she's a witch.

And Regulus approaches magic in much the same way. That's probably the source of her kinship with him.

"Like _this_ ," she says, and the curse strikes the tethered cat and makes its fur smoke. It yowls and claws at the ground. Regulus looks a little sick.

"It's only metal," Bella reassures him. "Not even as real as a house-elf. I'll turn it back when you're done with it, and then it will be like its pain never existed." She watches him critically as he aims. "Ready? Release!"

" _Ignis!_ "

Regulus's voice is a lot louder and more confident this time, and the curse lands the way it's supposed to, making the cat scream and claw the earth. Bella can see at least one real spark leaping down to the grass.

She smiles and hugs Regulus, and wonders if her parents will let her remain unmarried long enough for him to finish growing up. Maybe Mother wouldn't disapprove so much if it was with a cousin who's not crazy like Sirius.

"Good! Now again."

His eyes are like the sun, so bright in the warmth they provide her.

* * *

Andromeda looks into the mirror and watches as the brush in her hand smooths through Narcissa's waist-length hair. It's absolutely straight and blonde. Narcissa and Bellatrix are the pride of the family, beautiful and poised, Narcissa refined and Bellatrix exciting, while Andromeda is just "the other one."

 _Dark like Bella, but not beautiful like her._ If Andromeda has heard that once from Black and Rosier uncles and aunts and cousins, she's heard it a thousand times, and her hand cramps suddenly where she pulls her brush through Narcissa's hair. Narcissa hisses and raises a protective hand to her head.

"Watch it! When I said you could help brush my hair, I didn't say you could pull it out." Then Narcissa's eyes find hers in the mirror, and she frowns. "What's wrong?"

Andromeda chokes, and drops the brush, and turns away. They're in the guest room that's always Narcissa's whenever they visit Grimmauld Place. Some long-ago Black stuck mirrors to the wall with charms that can't be removed, and Aunt Walburga says that it's only fitting that the girl who will get the most use out of it should stay in it. She's even talked about having the same sort of charm on her portrait after she dies.

 _Useless, all of it,_ Andromeda thinks, and stares out the window at the garden filled with black roses. House-elves are tending them, moving slowly. Nearly all the Black house-elves are so old that their heads are ready to be put on the wall.

 _What a barbaric tradition._

It's only one thought among a thousand that Andromeda will never dare voice, because while she doesn't feel like she really has a place in her family, she also doesn't feel like she has a place outside it. She doesn't know anyone who thinks the same way. Sirius sometimes speaks like he does, but he retreats from there into jokes. Andromeda's too grave to do that.

"What is it?" Narcissa whispers behind her, and puts her arm around Andromeda's waist.

Andromeda has always thought it was unfair to make her little sister bear part of the burden of her grief, especially when it's so hard to put words around that grief, but right now, she doesn't care. She leans back, and Narcissa supports her weight and leans her chin on Andromeda's shoulder.

"I hate this place," Andromeda whispers, the one thing she can say that won't break Narcissa's sympathy into pieces. "It's so ugly, and I hate listening to Aunt Walburga and Uncle Orion fight."

"I know." Narcissa's fingers smooth slowly through her hair and up and down her back. Andromeda shuts her eyes. It's a long time since Narcissa has comforted her like this. Mother is always taking her to teas and parties and teaching her extra lessons in etiquette, since both she and Father are convinced that Narcissa is going to make the best marriage out of all of them. "But we leave tomorrow."

Andromeda chokes back the impulse to say that that won't be any better. Home doesn't have house-elf heads on the walls or fights in the background, but sometimes the chill silence between Mother and Father is worse.

Will her life hold that? Either that chill continuing around her forever, after her sisters have married and gone, or someone agreeing to wed her and then ending up with a man she either hates or dislikes?

"We're still sisters," Narcissa says suddenly, and again Andromeda looks into a mirror to meet her little sister's eyes, though this time it's the glass of the window. "We'll always have that."

It's not much, but it's better than anything else Andromeda can cling to right now. She turns around and embraces Narcissa, kissing her cheek. "You're right," she says. "We are. No one can change that or take it away."

And Narcissa smiles, and her brightness lights the room, and it's not as much of a hardship, after all, to go back to brushing her hair and listening to her make fun of some of the boring people she's met at parties.

* * *

Narcissa sits threading beads through her hair, and watching Andromeda read a book on the bed beside her.

Their house is big enough for them all to have rooms of their own, but Narcissa cried when Mother first suggested Andy should separate from her. And Narcissa gets most of what she wants—she's the baby and the beauty, and she knows it—and so even though Andromeda has plenty of rooms where she can go when she wants privacy, she still sleeps in the same room as Narcissa.

Her sister holds so many memories for Narcissa.

She can look at her hands and see the hands that brushed her hair for years, that held her up while she learned to swim, that cradled the books she taught Narcissa to read out of. Mother and Father would have taught her, of course, if she'd really made a fuss, but they preferred to have the house-elves do it.

And Narcissa didn't want to learn from them, anyway. She wanted to learn from Andy.

Andromeda is the one who taught her to do those things, and her eyes are still the most honest mirrors Narcissa gazes into. If she wants to know if her new dress is actually as gorgeous as all the boys tell her it is, she runs to Andy and stares into her face, and she knows. Andromeda doesn't speak the truth, not always, but Andy does.

And Narcissa knows, and treasures the knowledge, that she's the only one who knows Andy.

Mother and Father see the proper, polite young lady. Bella sees the younger sister in whom she takes only a vague interest. Other people see the middle Black daughter, who's just not as interesting as the other two.

But all of those people are _Andromeda._ Sometimes Narcissa thinks that not even Andromeda knows Andy, the sister who listens to Narcissa's fears and has put her to bed most of the nights she's been alive.

"Why are you staring at me?"

And it's Andromeda who says things like that. Narcissa runs over to her and nestles her hair into Andromeda's shoulder, sighing. After a second, Andy puts her arm around her.

"Did I do something wrong?" Narcissa whispers.

Andy smiles slightly, and finally says, "No. But you look like you're smelling something nasty when you squint, you know."

Narcissa leans her head on Andy's shoulder. She's also the only person in Narcissa's life who says things like that to her, who brings a whiff of reality into the drawing room. "Then I won't squint anymore, as long as you're there to remind me."

Andy sighs a little and says, "When you're an adult and married, you must do it on your own, you know."

They're too close to turning Andy back into Andromeda. Narcissa beats a small fist on the bedcovers, grateful that she's still too short and can look like a child when she wants, and says, "You'll always be there. We're _sisters_."

And there is the bright smile, the one Narcissa lives for. "You're right. We'll always be there."

"Of course we will," Narcissa says, and leans on her sister's shoulder, and is content.

Even when Andy pinches her nose and tells her she still's squinting. Nothing will ever break them apart. Narcissa's certain of it.

 **The End.**


End file.
